Lede:

Under a local law, drivers are supposed to be paid even for the time they spend between trips. But Uber and Lyft found a money-saving loophole: Simply prevent them from logging into the apps, erasing some of their working time from the record.

This is the shit government should be working to correct, if they weren’t all in it for the money just as much as the corporations.

Corporations and the general population have an innately antagonistic relationship. Corporations want to make as much money as possible, the general population wants to spend as little as possible, so their goals are diametrically opposed. (I’m pooling Uber drivers in with the general population here, because they’re in the same position - being opposed to Uber’s goals.)

Corporations inherently hold more power in this relationship; they have more money than even large groups of individuals, so they can hire expensive teams of lawyers and accountants and professionals of all kinds to further their goals, while it’s difficult if not impossible for normal folks to organize against a corporation in any meaningful way.

In a system that worked, the government would be working to protect the population from corporate interests. They’d be spending the bulk of their time identifying and closing loopholes like this one, and enacting laws to make exploiting these loopholes not worth it, and generally would be the arm of the people.

Instead, corporations pay government, and the government looks the other way - if not directly supports them - while they fuck over everyone they can - and the planet, while they’re at it -to reap wealth. And this shit is the result.

Uber screwing their own drivers.

Now if that isn’t some news!

/s

Very well written article, and a great methodology for collecting and analyzing the data. Maybe journalism isn’t completely dead yet.